(L-R): Halle Bailey as Ariel and Javier Bardem as King Triton in Disney's live-action THE LITTLE MERMAID. Photo courtesy of Disney. © 2023 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Courtney Howard // Film Critic
There are a handful of new songs in director Rob Marshall’s THE LITTE MERMAID that certainly make their mark. This live-action remake of Disney’s classic animated feature contains originals composed by Alan Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda, sung by the likes of characters whose voices remained silent before. In addition to Prince Eric’s (Jonah Hauer-King) “Wild Uncharted Waters” and Scuttle’s (Awkwafina) “The Scuttlebutt,” it turns out there was also song earmarked for merman King Triton (Javier Bardem).
Menken, at the film’s recent virtual press conference, said that the first step when it came to his approach to the new songs, was finding their natural placement.
“It’s a group process. Rob and John [DeLuca, producer], David Magee, Lin-Manuel Miranda and me got together and we went through how the story’s being adapted by David, and how the structure is. And then where are the potential spots? It’s as simple as that. And those decisions are made, first of all, by character, by moment, but also by sequence of a score, and what’s needed at a certain moment.”
With that in mind, he says that Bardem’s number became the all-too-common casualty of a big musical production.
“Javier sang a song that, it happens all the time in musicals, we didn’t need that particular spot for the film. And he’s a wonderful singer.”
Marshall added,
“We love working with actors who are new to musicals. Because they approach it from the right place. You know, they’re singing as the character, and they’re bringing that sort of scene to life through song. And they don’t even realize.”
Bardem joked about his temporarily hoarse voice at the press conference, saying,
“That’s why I don’t have a song in the movie.”
Even though he didn’t get to show off his pipes, he loved working with Halle Bailey, who plays his rebellious mer-daughter Ariel, who disobeys her father by going to the surface to live as a human and fall in love with one.
“Right in the moment I met her, I just fell for her. She has this thing where you just can’t help yourself but love her unconditionally. I was always mesmerized by the quality of her as a performer, let alone the singing that I knew. But as an actress, how willing and courageous she is. And in going to the places that she had to go to.”
Bardem found new colors to show as an actor in this project.
“It’s about a man who is deeply in love as a father with his daughter, and he’s confused and his fear and insecurity with that love. But he’s blocking her from her being free. So that kind of relationship is what I have to create, and that’s the role I have to play in the tale, for the tale to make sense.
One of the beautiful themes in the story is that the mother and the father, the adults learn from their kids. Very important lesson of what love means. They thought they knew, but no, they didn’t have a glimpse of what real love is until they see their own kids departing.”
Bardem did mention that the only thing that worried him about the part was potentially showing his bare chest.
“I’m very thankful that he put on armor, [rather than] Rob and John having me [be] bare naked. Like, Rob, don’t do that to me. ‘Don’t worry, you have on armor.’”
THE LITTLE MERMAID opens in theaters on May 26.
